If Liverpool or any of the others are interested in him, though, the deal won’t be getting done in January. It probably won’t get the rumour mongers to stop talking like it might, of course, but Dortmund’s sporting director insists a January move isn’t happening.

“We have known these rumours for many years,” Michael Zorc told Kicker when pressed on the matter of the 20-year-old Pulisic’s supposedly inevitable move to the greener, richer grass of the Premier League. “We plan at least until the end of the season with him.”

Taken at face value, it would at least seem to press pause on a Pulisic departure, but it won’t do much to convince anyone his long-term prospects involve Dortmund given he has 18-months to run on his current contract and talks over a new deal have broken down.

Dortmund, one imagines, will spend the next six months trying to change the player’s mind, to convince him to sign a new contract. If he doesn’t, though, they will need to sell him next summer to avoid losing him on a free in 2020.